Queer Silence

On Disability and Rhetorical Absence

J. Logan Smilges

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English

University of Minnesota Press
31 January 2023

Disability: social aspects; Gender studies, gender groups

Championing the liberatory potential of silence to address the fraught disability politics of queerness In queer culture, silence has been equated with voicelessness, complicity, and even death. Queer Silence insists, however, that silence can be a generative and empowering mode of survival. Triangulating insights from queer studies, disability studies, and rhetorical studies, J. Logan Smilges explores what silence can mean for people whose bodyminds signify more powerfully than their words. Queer Silence begins by historicizing silence’s negative reputation, beginning with the ways homophile activists rejected medical models pathologizing homosexuality as a disability, resulting in the silencing of disability itself. This silencing was redoubled by HIV/AIDS activism’s demand for “out, loud, and proud” rhetorical activities that saw silence as capitulation. Reading a range of cultural artifacts whose relative silence has failed to attract queer attachment, from anonymous profiles on Grindr to ex-gays to belated gender transitions to disability performance art, Smilges argues for silence’s critical role in serving the needs of queers who are never named as such. Queer Silence urges queer activists and queer studies scholars to reconcile with their own ableism by acknowledging the liberatory potential of silence, a mode of engagement that disattached queers use every day for resistance, sociality, and survival. Cover alt text: Background detail of a painting on canvas shows a partial view of the upper body and face of a figure, bearded and naked; title in painted script.

By: J. Logan Smilges
Imprint: University of Minnesota Press
Country of Publication: United States
Dimensions: Height: 216mm, Width: 140mm, Spine: 25mm
Weight: 454g
ISBN: 9781517914097
ISBN 10: 1517914094
Pages: 296
Publication Date: 31 January 2023
Audience: General/trade , Professional and scholarly , ELT Advanced , Undergraduate
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active

Introduction: Unspeakably Queer 1. To Speak of Silence 2. White Squares to Black Boxes 3. Queer(crip) Masquerading 4. Disidentifying Silence 5. Neuroqueer Intimacies Epilogue: Shameful Disattachments and Queer Illegibility Acknowledgments Notes Bibliography Index

J. Logan Smilges is assistant professor in the Department of Language, Culture, and Gender Studies at Texas Woman’s University.

Reviews for Queer Silence: On Disability and Rhetorical Absence

J. Logan Smilges's Queer Silence attends to that which remains unspoken or silenced in queer history. Through a series of brilliant rhetorical readings, Smilges critiques the silencing of disability that has been structural to queer theory. Simultaneously, this indispensable book points toward new ways of conceptualizing those who cannot or will not speak. -Robert McRuer, author of Crip Times: Disability, Globalization, and Resistance Queer Silence is a groundbreaking book that makes concerted interventions in the fields of queer studies, trans studies, disability studies, and contemporary rhetoric. Profound in its insights, incisive in its analysis, and gorgeous in its style, this book takes up cases of queer silences for analysis, attentively engaging the ruptures and omissions through which queerness, race, and disability co-emerge. -M. Remi Yergeau, author of Authoring Autism: On Rhetoric and Neurological Queerness